Marvel Entertainment’s next Star Wars comic book will take place even more of a long, long time ago than before, with a spotlight on Darth Maul revealing what a galaxy far, far away looked like before The Phantom Menace.

The newly announced five-issue Star Wars: Darth Maul series will take place before Maul’s on-screen debut in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, and sees the villain take on both the criminal underworld and Jedi in an attempt to prove himself to his mentor, Darth Sidious.

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‘Star Wars: Darth Maul’ #1 (Photo: Marvel)

Written by Cullen Bunn, with art by Luke Ross, the series will be the first extended look at the canonical Star Wars galaxy before The Phantom Menace. Prior to 2014’s reorganization of the canonical mythology of the franchise, multiple series of comics, books, and video games had been set before the era of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, but recently the focus of exploration has firmly stayed in the era surrounding the existing movies.